Talk by Shirin Neshat, Aida Mahmudova, Sara Raza & Suad Garayeva in new YARAT Centre
24 Mar 15
17:30 - Curatorial walk with Suad Garayeva
18:00 - Talk by Shirin Neshat, Aida Mahmudova and Sara Raza, moderated by Suad Garayeva.
YARAT Contemporary Art Space is delighted to announce that a panel discussion involving famous artist and film-maker Shirin Neshat will take place on Tuesday 24th March 2015 at the new YARAT Contemporary Art Centre.
This will be an opportunity to look at how Neshat’s arts education, both formal and informal across different countries, has informed the artist’s practice. On this discussion Shirin Neshat will be joined by Aida Mahmudova, the Founder of YARAT Contemporary Art Space and Sara Raza, YARAT’s Head of Education and the Guggenheim's UBS MAP Curator for the New York Museum .
The session will be chaired by Suad Garayeva, Curatorial Director at YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, who will also lead a curatorial walk through the exhibition prior to the talk.
Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1957, and moved to the United States in 1974.
Beginning with her early series of black and white photographs of women in various guises overlaid with painterly calligraphic text, titled Women of Allah (1993–1997), and continuing through her current practice, Neshat has consistently and fluently probed issues of gender, power, displacement, protest, identity, and the space between the personal and the political with a singular and powerful aesthetic. As artist Marina Abramović writes, Neshat’s work “acknowledges the full complexity of Muslim identity, specifically as perceived through female eyes, and the full richness of Persian culture.”
Following Women of Allah, Neshat began working in video, departing from overtly political content or critique in favour of poetic imagery and complex human narratives. Her trilogy of two-channel video installations in black-and-white - Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999) and Fervor (2000) - explores the separate experiences of men and women with the energy of myth, while later projects, including Passage (2001), a collaboration with composer Phillip Glass, capture universal themes of ritual and loss. In 2009, Neshat directed her first feature-length film, Women Without Men, based on the novel of the same name by Shahrnush Parsipur. The film received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival.
In 2010, The Huffington Post declared Neshat 'Artist of the Decade'. Her work is included in the collections of museums and public institutions around the world.
Shirin serves on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Creative Time and is currently working on her second feature-length film, based on the life and art of the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Neshat lives and works in New York.
Aida Mahmudova is the Founder and Creative Director of YARAT, a non-profit art organisation which she launched in October 2011 with a group of artists. YARAT has commissioned over 120 projects to date and is dedicated to nurturing an understanding of contemporary art in Azerbaijan and to creating a platform for Azerbaijani art, both nationally and abroad. In Baku, the organisation has led a varied education programme for multiple audiences, hosted film festivals, created two public art festivals, produced exhibitions, commissioned artists and forged collaborations with museums and international institutions.
On March 23rd 2015, YARAT is opening its Contemporary Art Centre in Baku, a dedicated hub for contemporary art and art education in the Caucasus, Central Asia and neighboring countries. Aida is herself a practicing artist and her work has been shown at exhibitions both locally and abroad. She is a member of the Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee at Tate Modern, in addition to being the Curatorial Director at the Baku Museum of Modern Art.
Sara Raza is a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, London, an independent curator, editor for ArtAsiaPacific Magazine (West and Central Asia) and contributing editor for Harper's Bazaar and Ibraaz. Sara is currently an associate curator for Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, and was recently the founding head of curatorial programmes at Alaan Artspace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Since 2010 she has been a visiting lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London for the Masters Contemporary Art programme. Sara is a former curator of public programmes at Tate Modern, South London Gallery and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and has curated, lectured and published internationally. She blogs about her activities at sararaza.com.
Sara Raza is the Head of Education at YARAT Contemporary Art Space since 2014 and has recently been appointed as the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for the New York Museum .
Suad Garayeva is the Curatorial Director at YARAT Contemporary Art Centre. She will be in charge of Exhibitions and YARAT's growing permanent collection. She will also be curating their collateral event at the upcoming 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 - The Union of Fire and Water. Suad previously worked at Sotheby’s as a specialist in Contemporary Art from Russia and the CIS. She curated the pioneering At The Crossroads exhibition, which introduced contemporary art from the Caucasus and Central Asia in 2013, followed by At The Crossroads 2: Art from Istanbul to Kabul, in 2014. She also headed the Russian and Eastern European Contemporary Art sales including Contemporary East and Changing Focus in 2013.
Suad has been a long-time collaborator with YARAT, curating their pavilion at the GRID International Photography Biennale in 2012 and 2014. She has also worked on numerous international exhibitions, such as the National Pavilion of Azerbaijan at the 53rd and 54th Venice Biennales. She has an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from LSE, an MLitt in Modern and Contemporary Art from the University of Glasgow and is a member of the Russian and Eastern European Acquisitions Committee at Tate Modern.
Address: YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, Sabail District (near the National Flag square), Baku, Azerbaijan.
Admission: Free
